Some questions on Jesus from N T Wright

I’m still in the introduction to N T Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God (ok, I’m reading this excellent book for the second time!).

In his chapter on the ‘Third Quest’ Wright offers five, or six, questions that have emerged from this ‘Third Quest’ and are worthy of being answered.

1. How does Jesus fit into Judaism?
2. What were Jesus’ aims?
3. Why did Jesus die?
4. How and why did the early Church begin?
5. Why are the Gospels the way they are?

Clearly these questions belong together. It is possible to offer an answer to one without addressing the others, but any such answer will necessarily have implications for the other four.
These questions cannot be answered either by theology or by history alone, but require a combination of history and theology to provide any reasonable answer.

The historical fixed points are:
1. Second Temple Judaism
2. About 100 ad the existence of a vibrant and growing Christian Church.
Between these two points we have the life and death of Jesus, the beginnings and expansion of the early Church and the writing of the Gospels. N T Wright is correct to challenge us that any account of Jesus must address all of these points.

The rejection of history as important in the study of Jesus has been made in a number of ways. Amongst others Bultmann rejected the Jesus of history as compromising the Christ of faith. One should encounter Jesus afresh in the existential moment of encounter and there is no need for a Jesus of history. A certain type of piety also rejects the Jesus of history, this is done for faith, or as it is claimed to promote faith, we approach the Gospels, and other New Testament writings with faith and when challenged by history retreat into a form of faith which rejects all need for evidence from history.
Both of these forms of rejecting history are themselves to be rejected.

Our Christian faith rests upon the history of God’s work of Salvation in and through Jesus Christ his Son, who is this Jesus of history. This Jesus must recognisably be located within second Temple Judaism and there must be in his life and death something of such significance as to explain the growth and expansion of the Church within just a few decades of his death.

The possible sixth question is, ‘So what?’ Why after all these years are we still bothering with Jesus? Why is it we can leave him alone and carry on without him? What difference does a historical account of Jesus, his life and death make? Or, what difference would an historical account that disproved the Gospels historical claims make? These are questions that thinking disciples of the Lord Jesus cannot fail to address.

A conversation partner

Over at Peter's Blog, I'm in a conversation with Peter Johnston on a post he made entitled Red Letter Christians.
It's important to talk, but more important to listen, especially with those we don't always agree with. I pray that our conversation will be helpful to us both and to others as we seek to respond to God's gracious self-revelation in Scritpure and seek his way in the life of our churches today.

Songs of Praise

Last night we (Fiona, John and I) were at the New Cumnock Songs of Praise evening. This is the tenth annual Songs of Praise evening when the congregations choir is expanded by friends from neighbouring congregations, music provided by the Sanquhar Silver band and others.
This series of services started when I was minister at New Cumnock back in 2000 and has been carried on by Christine Wilson - well done Christine.
Have a look at the New Cumnock web site.

Albert in Peru

You really should take some time to visit Albert's blog at iTalker. Albert is over in Peru just now and is blogging on why he is there and who he is meeting.

The Vine Trust do a tremendous work in Peru in partnership with SU Peru. While in Scotland too many people have steam coming out their ears about unimportant things it is good to be challenged to care about something that matters.

Induction

Last night I was at the Induction of David Cameron at Dalmeny lw Edin: Queensferry. A long drive home afterwards but it was good to be with the congregation and David and Lesley at the beginning of this new ministry.

Travelled from and to Glasgow with Alan McWilliam and had some great conversations, especially during the hour and a half in a traffic jam on the M8!

So if anyone is ever in Dalmeny (10.00 a.m.) or Queensferry (11.30 a.m.) on a Sunday, go along and worship with David and the congregation there.

Miles Davis

For the last half hour I been jumping round blogs listening to Miles Davis 'Round ABout Midnight. Is there a better Jazz trumpeter than Miles?

On media myopia

I picked up a copy of The Third Way in Belfast last Good Friday and have been subscribing since then. I like reading things I don't always agree with, but mostly find this a helpful comment on culture from a Christian perspective. Check out some recent articles on the web site - The Third Way.

In the April 2009 there is a helpful article 'Media Myopia' by Claire Aston. She writes,

"British viewers are given a distorted view of the world, the report [The Great Global Switch Off] argues, with an overwhelming concentration of coverage of the United States, Europe and the English speaking world. By comparison, coverage of Africa is skewed. Only three countries - South Africa, Kenya and Uganda - out of the 52 are normally ever seen because coverage of Africa is almost entirely about wildlife. South America is also virtually ignored."

In 2007 I visited Malawi with Tearfund, in 2004 I visited Peru with the Vine Trust. It is very difficult to gather English language news of these countries, and you almost never hear news of these countries on TV or radio in the UK. Our media is obsessed with celebrity to the extent that news coverage of the poorest countries is almost non existent. The difficult issues like HIV/AIDS, climate change, trade justice or water and sanitation issues are simply not covered in a way that is easily accessible to the general public in the UK.

Who will speak up for the poor and the needy? Those of us who know and who care will have to find creative and engaging ways to help our neighbours in this country hear the news our broadcasters aren't giving us.

A cold day in Stranraer

Didn't get much blogging done last week, will try better this week.

They've taken our boiler out today, replacing with a more efficient boiler. I'm sure it will be great when it's done, but it's cold right now.

A display of love

I'm preparing a sermon for Sunday night on 1 John 3:11-24. In the midst of this section we read the following:

1 John 3:16-18 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

I've just written down for my sermon, 'Love is not a word to define, but a deed to do.'

In the death of the Lord Jesus on the cross God displays his love for us. The death of the Lord Jesus is self-giving, self-sacrificing, so that we might know the love of God for us Christ held back nothing of himself but gave everything for us.

This becomes for us the example we are to follow as we love one another, self-giving, self-sacrificing that God's love might be known by many in and through us.

Comic Relief, Tearfund and Malawi

In Feb 2007 I was able to visit Malawi on a Tearfund study tour. In Blantyre we visited the Chisomo Club, a work of the Living Waters Community Church, supported by Tearfund and also by Comic Relief.
Here are some extracts from my trip diary for Mon 12 Feb 2007.

We visited the work of the Chisomo Children’s club. Chisomo means ‘grace’ and there are two offices in Blantyre and one in Lilongwe.

Having encountered a starving child dying on the street in Blantyre the pastor of the Living Waters church decided that it was not enough only to preach the gospel to the spirit of a human but that the church had to care for the whole person. In 1998 the church started to meet with children and employed one member of staff, Mcdonald, whom we met during our visit.
The workers on the project would go out to where the children were and meet them. The beginning of the work was meeting with the children and playing games with them, there was a trip to the Lake.

A centre was purchased, with help from various supporters, and this is for short stay so that the children need not be sleeping on the streets. The centre is therefore kept purposefully Spartan so that children will be encouraged to want to go back home to their families. The work of Chisomo is to seek to reconcile children, who often have run away from the poverty at home, with their families. Most children are reintegrated with their families within three months. The centre in Blantyre successfully helps about 500 children each year, with about 2,000 being helped in other centres around Malawi.

The aim of this project is to strengthen the bond between the children and their family. When the family is contacted and the children go home the project is now beginning to work with families to help in the situations of poverty that have initially caused the child to run away from home.
The programmes running at the centre are on relationship building, family and community integration, education and health advocacy.

The children who come through the centre have mostly left home to escape from poverty, thinking they will not be poor in the city. Some have experienced sexual abuse and exploitation at home. Some children have been orphaned through bereavement and then are taken in by other family members seeking to gain the property of the deceased parents; children may then be abused by their new carers.
The centre offers counselling to help reintegration with families and is seeing a 95% success rate in their work.

A core value of the project is child involvement and seeking the views of the children. The children are involved in staff interviews and policy regarding the centre.

Some photographs from Chisomo:

This is the club centre building in Blantyre, a place of safety for children who would otherwise be in danger on the streets.

Some of the boys who were in the club on the day we visited.

It is good to know that Comic Relief supports such wonderful work, so let’s do something funny for money!

On a day when the foundations are shaken

When the foundations are being destroyed,
what can the righteous do? (Psalm 11:3)

Lord, today the foundations are being shaken once again.
We pray
for families and communities in:
Samson and Geneva, in Alabama USA,
Winnenden, Germany
for whom it will seem as though the world has changed for ever.

In many ways it has.

Lord, what can we do?

The Lord is in his holy temple;
the Lord is on his heavenly throne. (Psalm 11:4)
Father, we don't want to run away from the suffering and sorrows of this world,
we want to stand with those in such pain and need.
But only as we see you,
the Lord who is enthroned over all the chaos,
the Lord who reigns in the beauty of your holiness,
only as we see you can we stand today.

The Lord loves justice (psalm 11:7)
O God, do justice for bereaved families today,
do justice for wounded communities and neighbourhoods,
do justice for a world in great need of your mercy.

Teach us how to pray that we might stand with those in need. Amen.

I'm re reading N T Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God. If you haven't read it then give it a try, it is well worth it.

His section on Burton L Mack (and the Question of Q) pages 35-44 is interesting as it connects with a post on reading the bible I made earlier.

Wright suggests that Mack has allowed his antipathy towards late 20th Century American Christianity colour his reading of the gospel of Mark in a major way. Mack reconstructs a Jesus who resembles a 'Cynic sage, spinning aphorisms designed to subert his hearers social and cultural worlds' (p. 37) Mack achieves this by excluding from his consideration of Jesus any material that is apocalyptic or eschatological. Well if you leave out half the gospel material no wonder you end up with a view of Jesus quite different from that presented in the gospels!

In my earler post - On Bible Reading, Sat 7 March - I was challenging that way of reading the bible which ignores passages or material which the reader doesn't like, or doesn't want to submit to. One of my Professors, the late Bob Carroll, was fond of saying 'Read the text', all of the text. If at the end of an exposition there was surplus text left lying on the table Bob would be hugely critical. (And those who knew Bob would not know him as a conservative Biblical scholar!).

We simply cannot read the parts of the bible we want to read and ignore all the rest and then claim to be scholarly, or historical, or whatever. This is not to exclude the valuable work of textual criticism which highlights for us passages we should rightly be suspicious of, e.g. the endings of Mark's gospel. What the Church has always needed is a commitment from her members to the whole word of God: to read with faith and reverence, to study with all the tools and ability God has given us, to obey in lives given to following this Jesus who is both Christ and Lord.

Facts or/and ideology

It is reported today, see The Herald, that President Obama has overturned a ban on stem cell research. I'm not posting about stem cell research, but about what the President has said in making this decision.

'In lifting the ban, the president stated yesterday that he would make scientific decisions "based on facts, not ideology" from now on.' Facts, not ideology. But later in this article the President is further quoted:
"As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research - and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly."

To believe that we are called to care for each other is not a fact, it is a belief position, an ideology if you like. As humans we function as believing creatures, we act upon points, articles of faith. This is how we have been made. Even to deny that ideology, or faith, has any place in government decision making is a faith, or ideological position.

But more importantly, we cannot deny that many if not all of the decisions made by our governments involve moral choices. There is a choice to be made between moral values and scientific enquiry. This is why we should have our scientists governed by those with moral authority, or at least a moral responsibility to protect the vulnerable and weak.

President Obama has fallen into the false position of claiming to be a person of faith, yet acting independently of his faith. I for one don't want the leaders of our nations to divorce their faith from their decision making.

Tyndale House Newsletter

I'm an associate member of the Tyndale Fellowship in Cambridge which exists to promote Biblical Studies. There current newsletter is available on line, please go over and check out the news from Tyndale House.

An Excellent Book For Easter Reading

I've just finished reading this book, Jesus, The Final Days, by Craig Evans and Tom Wright in the last five minutes and wanted to share how good a book I found it to be.

Not a long book, just 107 pages plus a short index, only three chapters based on lectures given in the Symposium for Church and Academy at Crichton College, Memphis, Tennessee.

Two chapters, on death of the Lord Jesus and the burial of the Lord Jesus by Craig Evans and one on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus by Tom Wright.
Both these rightly respected scholars offer a historical opinion on the events of Easter, asking about these central elements, did they happen? After so many years of Enlightenment hubris it is exciting to read two such able scholars and historians dealing with the historical evidence and showing that historically the death, the burial and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus are credible, if not more than that!

History is important, as Tom Wright comments, 'The "truth" of the crucifixion story would be totally undermined if it could be proved that Jesus died of pneumonia in Galilee, even though of course the crucifixion sets of all kinds of metaphorical resonances in the minds of people ancient and modern. And the "truth" of the resurrection story is like that too. If it didn't happen, it isn't true.' (page 103-104, emphasis added)

If it didn't happen, it isn't true. Let's give thanks to our God that he has raised up in his Church and for his world such scholars to give us great assurance in the events of our salvation. Let us with joy and confidence celebrate the festival as we remember all that our Lord Jesus did for us in those final days.

On bible reading

This week I’ve been reading through Romans 9 to 11. This is surely a very challenging passage of Scripture which must raise some serious questions for us about our God, our relationship to him and the text in which we read these things.

For many any thought of election is an abomination, to be rejected out of hand. However, this is something that is taught in Scripture, even if we might want to argue about what it means. At the very least we should agree that this is what the Scripture teaches.

As a result of just over 100 years of very thorough textual research we can say with something approaching 97% accuracy that the text of the New Testament is settled and well attested. It is just not reasonable to suppose that at some point the actual words of the New Testament are in doubt.

However, while not saying this, or challenging this outcome of scholarly study, there are many who without a backward glance will excise some passage of the New Testament on the grounds that they don’t like it, or it doesn’t fit in with their understanding of God.

In the Reformed tradition we have agreed to place Scripture above human reason and above human tradition. Not above the need for Spirit led interpretation, we are to study the Scriptures with all the skill and wisdom God has given us aided by his Spirit. What we have agreed is to being our study with a humble and reverent submission to Scripture. God has spoken. It is not up to us to ignore or reject God’s word on the basis that we don’t like it, or it doesn’t fit in with our understanding of God. It is up to us to remain before the Scripture until God blesses us in it.

What is needed in our churches, in our Christian living as we seek to be disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the living word of God, is a holy submission before the written word of God that it might be the light shinning in our darkness to lead us into the way of the cross.

EA Slipstream - new podcast

There is a new podcast from EA Slipstream available to download now.

This podcast features Tim Hughes, Director of Worship at Holy Trinity Brompton Church in London. He is also a songwriter with Survivor Records and heads up Worship Central, a worship training resource. He is married to Rachel and they have two children (including a newborn!).

Visit this site and give it a listen, well worth your time.